Seven San Francisco schools among “Best High Schools”

Seven San Francisco high schools have landed in the top 5 percent of “Best High Schools,” according to U.S.News and World Report.

For those keeping score, that’s about half of the traditional high schools in the city.

No surprise, Lowell was the highest ranked among city schools, coming in 51st nationally and 11th in California.

the catch

We've still got this, Dallas.

U.S. News folks, (with real American Institutes for Research researchers actually holding the pens), evaluated 22,000 high schools in 49 states using 2010 numbers, ranking them on student-teacher ratio, college readiness and academic achievement.

Nebraska wasn’t included because of a lack of data.

Taking the top spot nationally was the School for the Talented and Gifted in Dallas (but really, it’s too hot in Dallas).

In California, the top school was the Oxford Academy in Cypress, which came in 11th nationally.

Here’s how San Francisco did (in California, and nationally):

Lowell: 11th; 51st

Ruth Asawa School of the Arts: 35th; 169th

Washington: 85th 457th

Balboa: 140th 749th

Galileo: 148th 784th

Lincoln: 181st, 940th

And coming in as a strong dark horse: Wallenberg at 199th in the state and 1,033rd in the nation.

The other city high schools didn’t make the cut for rankings.

While the rankings in years past have focused on Advanced Placement tests, the new methodology is “based on the key principles that a great high school must serve all of its students well, not just those who are college-bound, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show the school is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators,” according to U.S. News.